Gives you some appreciation for what Charles Lindbergh did in a comparatively crude flying machine, Spirit of St. Louis, when he soloed across the Atlantic on his way to Paris from Long Island N.Y. on May 20, 1927. Though his distance was less than this flight, 3500 miles compared to 4300 miles, his was longer in time, 33 hours compared to 22 hours. Lindbergh was lying in a prone position the entire time relying on a periscope device to sight forward while surrounded by hundreds of gallons of gasoline carried in spare tanks crammed into the fuselage taking up most of the available space

He had hardly slept the night before, the field was muddy making the takeooff hazardous and the takeoff roll longer the following morning at 8am whence he barely cleared some telephone wires at the field boundary. He at times was no more than a mere 10 feet above the Atlantic waves trying to get under the fog. He had no one to talk to and had carried 4 sandwiches as inflight catering. He relied entirely on dead reckoning navigation with a simple compass to guide him but came amazingly close to his planned landfall position on the Irish coast. At one point he started to ice up but managed to get low enough into warmer air to eliminate the hazard.

The most dangerous part of his flight may have been the landing at Paris when people broke through the police barracade and cam running at him with the engine still running and the prop turning. He was afraid he was going to kill somebody so he shut down the engine immediately after coming to a stop. He was a shy young man who was shuffled from pillar to post after his heroic achievement who didn't care much for all the attention he received which ultimately changed his life forever and not all of it for the best. His fame resulted in the painful kidnapping death of his first son.

Bill left Guam just a little before midnight EST last night on his way to Florida. He had some headwinds at the beginning. He is doing this to set a distance record. His Lancair IV is chock full of fuel tanks with not much room for anything else. His current position is 034°05′41.6′′N, 163°41′53.3′′W (about 900 miles north of Hawaii), he is at 15,447 ft and doing 187kts.

He went almost 1000 mi. longer than the great circle too! Shortest route would have been over N California. I wonder how he decided on this route, or whether he wanted to get the mileage up for some record. Now he has to get back, unless of course he is continuing around the world westbound.

Well, something is squirrely just at a glancing look. When you call up the story and get the FA track there, it says 4340sm direct and 5320sm as flown. Well that track looked pretty straight and just about as direct as one could go and I can't see 980 miles there.I got mixed up on on last week comparing NM and SM, but these both say SM. Now I guess running it thru a full plan and track might bring it down exact but I still don't see 980 miles there. Anybody care to enlighten?

Dumb non-pilot question: On a flight that long, is it possible to set the autopilot to read a book? (or other things that take your eyes off the instruments) Or do you really need to be focused for 22 hours?

I would have done that flight the other direction if I were him and were going for a record. Pretty small target the way he did it. Lots of options if something goes wrong if you set the record the other way.

Don't nail me with this statement if i have it wrong, but I believe Peter Garrison in a homebuilt flying gas tank called Melmoth which he not only built but designed himself, flew the thing from CA to Japan nonstop....Here's a guy I admire, more so because he did it with his wife on board.....I can only imagine the rhetoric going on during that flight!

What are the "rules" for the record, if that's what he's after. He may not have been able to stop and still challenge the record he was after. As for flying the route in the other direction, airplane drivers have been making that trip for many years, before nav. aids and loran and long before GPS and SatNav. It wasn't that long ago that the hottest lick was on board radio direction equipment combined with dead reckoning and celestial sightings. There's certainly no shortage of time to do the arithmetic.